Friday, August 14, 2015

Excavations of a Frontier Fort

Our review of the last 50 years in Pennsylvania Archaeology
continues with a project that was conducted in the late 1970s at historic Fort
Augusta in Northumberland County. Fort Augusta is located at the confluence of
the North and West branches of the Susquehanna River in the present town of
Sunbury, Pennsylvania. This fortification was part of a line of forts and
blockhouses constructed during the Seven Years War, also known as the French
and Indian War, in the mid-eighteenth century.

By the early eighteenth century, an Indian village, Shamokin,
was established at this location. Shamokin was home to the famous Indian
negotiator Shickellamy and his family and later also housed Moravian
missionaries. In the mid-1700s, fear of attack by the French and their Indian
allies led to the abandonment of the village and a request from the local
natives to the British to place a fort in this location. During July 1756,
construction of a large, fortified log structure was initiated by Colonel
William Clapham, but it was not completed until 1757 under the command of
Colonel James Burd.

The fort was constructed mainly of logs and earth and plans
show that it was in the form of a square with diamond-shaped bastions in each corner.
A wide, dry moat and stockade surrounded the fort and provided protection for
the barracks, powder magazine, water well, and other interior structures. An
outer stockade with four blockhouses along the Susquehanna River provided a protected
area for boats coming upstream with supplies from Harris’s Ferry and Fort
Hunter to land.

Although frequent raids by French-allied Indians occurred, Fort
Augusta was never attacked by the French and it provided protection to the
local inhabitants, friendly natives, and soldiers until the hostilities ended in
1762. The fort was utilized again during Pontiac’s Rebellion (1763) and the
Revolutionary War but was demolished by the end of the eighteenth century. A
later fort commander, Samuel Hunter, eventually retained a portion of the
property and built the Hunter Mansion. (Please note, this site is not to be
confused with Fort Hunter Mansion & Park in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania.) Hunter
Mansion became a museum and headquarters for Northumberland County Historical
Society in 1989. The only remains of the fort that are visible today are the
well and the powder magazine.

The general location of Fort Augusta was known as early as
1896, when the Report of the Commission
to Locate the Site of the Frontier Forts of Pennsylvania was published
(Busch). This report attempted to locate and document all of the early frontier
forts in the state. A Works Progress Administration (WPA) investigation of the
fort was conducted in 1938 in the front yard of the Hunter Mansion. In addition
to locating the remains of Fort Augusta, work included the construction of a
large-scale model of the fort and the renovation of the Hunter Mansion.
Unfortunately, excavation records from this investigation have not been located.
Although French and Indian War-period artifacts were recovered and portions of
the fort structure were identified, as well as Native American burials uncovered,
there is little record of the results except for a short article in Pennsylvania Archaeologist (Godcharles
1938:75). The archaeological site of Fort Augusta was assigned the trinomial
designation of 36Nb0071.

View
of the Original Fort Augusta Model at the Museum along the Susquehanna River (Photo: Bucknell
University)

In an attempt to reveal the construction and layout of the
fort, archaeological investigations were conducted in 1978 and 1979 on a vacant
property (called the Charles Cobler property) just north of the Hunter House. Trenches
placed on the Cobler property indicated the presence of large amounts of fill
materials associated with the fort construction and its demolition. Below this,
archaeologists uncovered the remains of the earlier Indian occupation of the
town of Shamokin and even earlier prehistoric occupations. Portions of the
palisade wall, trench, and the dry moat were discovered and fort-period artifacts
such as animal bones, musket balls, gun parts, buttons, cannon balls, and
colonial ceramics as well as earlier Indian objects were recovered. In
addition, fragments of iron and brass, slag, charcoal, worked gun parts, stone
from a foundation, and highly oxidized soil indicated the presence of a
“smithy” or blacksmith shop. This shop was identified as that constructed by
the Moravian missionaries, who lived at Shamokin from the 1740s to 1755
(Nichols 1979).

Subsequent investigations were conducted in 1981, 1992, and
2005/2006 in attempts to better define and locate the structures identified in
historic documents. In 1981, trenching was conducted in a parking lot, which
would be impacted by a construction project, and in the probable location of
the fort’s northeast bastion. Excavations in this area of the parking lot
yielded mainly Indian artifacts while excavations in the supposed bastion
uncovered the remains of a log footer, the dry moat, and a fort-period pit
feature in conjunction with minor amounts of military artifacts (Lewis 1981). The
1992 excavations concentrated on the powder magazine, which was to be repaired.
Investigations established the relationship of the magazine to other features
of the yard and determined that much of the artificial fill over this feature
was due to a nineteenth century tower placed in this location (Warfel 1992). In
2005/2006, testing was conducted in conjunction with a proposed new library and
reconstruction of the large-scale fort model on the front lawn of the Hunter
Mansion. Large amounts of fill were also found during this investigation as
well as additional remains of the fort wall, dry moat, and other fort-related
features (Delle 2006).

Excavations of the Powder Magazine during the 1992 Excavations (Photo:
PHMC Collections)

Taken as a whole, the various excavations at Fort Augusta
have allowed investigators to position the fort on the landscape of modern
Sunbury, determine construction methods, locate elements of the earlier
Shamokin town and Moravian blacksmith shop, and match physical evidence to the
written accounts of this period of Pennsylvania history. In 2013, the large-scale
model, which had been previously dismantled, was reconstructed at the Hunter
Mansion. For more information on Fort Augusta or the Northumberland County
Historical Society, please check out their website at http://www.northumberlandcountyhistoricalsociety.org/default.asp.

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One Tank Trip

WFMZ-TV 69 from Reading, Pennsylvania visited The State Museum of Pennsylvania on February 8th, 2017. Karin Mallett prepared a feature piece on great places to visit that are one tank of gas from Reading and our gallery was the focus of this visit. Karin interviewed Kurt Carr, Senior Curator and Janet Johnson in the gallery and provide a nice overview of the spectacular exhibits. Please click on the link below and enjoy this glimpse of the museum during this One Tank Trip!
One Tank Trip: Hall of Anthropology and Archaeology

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